Current news concerning Oaxaca, Mexico as well as Mark's thoughts, for what they are worth, on the world's most pressing issues of the day.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Katrina: NY Yankees step up to the plate

The New York Yankee baseball club donated $1 million yesterday to hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

"This is one of America's greatest natural disasters and tragedies and it is the responsibility of the American public to step up and help those in need," said owner George Steinbrenner.

If every other major league baseball team gave half that much, professional baseball's donations would total $15.5 million dollars. If all of America's richest sports franchises, clubs and leagues and individuals gave according to their sport's income levels, we might have something approaching this:

Fortune 500 companies - avg $1 billion ea = $500 billionThis ain't rocket science. Examples: Wal-mart (which has already donated $1 million) adds 1 penny to every SKU moved out of its stores for one year. How many SKU's does Wal-mart move annually? I dunno but it must be a mind boggling number, like 100 billion or a trillion or some astronomical figure like that. A great advertising ploy, also. Wal-mart announces its projected SKU sales and that it will add 1 cent to each SKU and match that number from corporate profits. That's a total donation after 1 year of somewhere around 2-20 billion dollars. Exxon announces that it will donate $1 per barrel of oil pumped or purchased. How many barrels does Exxon pump or purchase annually? I dunno, but America's oil usage is somewhere around 17 million barrels per day, every day, 365 days per year. If every oil company did this they would be donating $17 million per day or $6.2 billion dollars. If the feds added a $.25 per barrel relief tax we would generate another $1.5 billion.

If every other company of every type and size in America donated according to its ability, from Joe the Plumber, LLC, who gives a hundred bucks to Jack's Construction, Inc., that donates $5000 to Wal-mart and Exxon at $2 billion each, the totals would be staggering.

Then, if every individual wage earner and pensioner gave according to his and her ability, from Jose the gardener who kicks in 5 bucks to Tiger Woods who donates $2 million (in addition to his PGA donation) to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, George Soros and Tay-ray-sa Heinz Kerry who donate about $100 million each, we could probably hit several trillion dollars pretty quickly. Then we could sit back and watch the politicians waste about 30% of it, but what the hell are you gonna do?

We would also show the world what The United States of America is really all about. We'll take care of our own, thank you very much, and quickly and efficiently, too. Sit back and watch us.